The 'Cool Docks', colloquially known as "Lao Ma Tou", was supposed to be the new, exciting, "in" place in Shanghai, a worthy successor and worthwhile competitor to Xintiandi, a wildly popular entertainment/resto/live band complex with restored "Shikumen"-style architecture, where thousands of locals and foreigners converge every night to eat and party and let their hair loose while in Shanghai.
Hence, yours truly braved the extreme cold and ventured forth to this night spot. Surprisingly, the staff at the hotel and the taxi driver were not familiar with the place, and it took a bit of persistent questioning before someone produced the name of the Cool Docks in Chinese characters.
Which should really have been a tip-off for me. Why?
After alighting from the cab, and entering the complex, one is greeted with absolute silence, and lack of any human crowd whatsoever.
I mentally calculated the number of people present whilst talking a walk around the complex. Let me see, maybe 20 paying customers in total? Not quite the numbers the people who conceptualized this place had in mind, that's for sure!
The array of restos is not so bad. Cuisines represented are Greek, Indian, Chinese, American (steakhouse), etc. with some coffee shops and tea houses (even Starbucks is here).
I finally settled on Mythos (Greek resto), where the staff saw fit to put me on the 3rd floor. Strange, because only one table was occupied on the 1st floor (2 persons at that!), and the 2nd floor was totally empty. So, i was the only patron on the 3rd floor!
(see below pic of Mythos interiors)
And while the food wasn't bad (expensive, though), it was a rather weird experience with 3 wait-staff hanging on to your every bite of food you eat and every sip of juice you take. :D
Oh, and that ubiquitous Starbucks branch? TOTALLY EMPTY!
You might say the Cool Docks is totally un-cool at the moment (pun intended). Which is a bit puzzling, really. Lest one thinks the people in Shanghai were opting to stay at home due to the cold weather, i went to Xintiandi the night after, and the place was packed to the rafters. Go figure.
So, if you happen to be in Shanghai, check this place out. . .before it closes down! :D(The 'Cool Docks' is located at 505 Zhongshan Nan Lu, Shanghai, a stone's throw from the Bund)
WOULD YOU PAY TO BE ON FACEBOOK?
It's insidious. It's addictive. It's the productivity-sapping bane of offices worldwide.On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for US$240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around US$15 billion. Knowing Bill Gates, Facebook must be rolling in dough, right?
Apparently not, it seems.
A. How does Facebook make money?How many people are on Facebook? No one knows exactly, but latest estimates range from 175 million to 250 million users.
A cursory internet search showed the following: According to founder Mark Zuckerberg, revenues of US$300 - 350 million are projected for 2009 [Feb. '09].
FB is supposed to be breaking even, but they plan to spend US$200 million on servers next year, which might land them in the RED.
Sources of revenues are essentially the ff:
i. Advertising (brand ads, deal with Microsoft)
Apparently, companies pay Facebook a hefty sum of money to place their ads on the right-hand side of the screen. These ads are supposedly customized based on your stated interests in your profile, so that there is a higher likelihood they would be of interest to you.
But really, when was the last time you actually clicked on a banner ad? Enough said.
ii. Virtual goods
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allowed users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost US$1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift.
But can this be a major revenue driver in the coming years? I would think that people are more interested in answering quizzes, and tagging friends on countless party photos, and coming up with feeling-profound status updates (ex., "Chubbs thinks happiness is optional. Que sera sera."), than in giving each other virtual gifts.
Facebook's database on its users is a veritable goldmine, and there have been plans to sell the information to other companies, but these have been hindered by protests from users about invasion of privacy.
B. Alternative revenue-generating scheme for Facebook
Well, here's my suggestion: Stop making Facebook a free site, and START CHARGING USERS.Of course, the idea of pay-as-you-go subscriptions for internet content is not entirely new. Stanley Bing, columnist of Fortune magazine, is skeptical of this approach. In his August 17th column, he barked, "How about Facebook? Would millions of lonely, homebound losers be encapsulating their lives in all their digital splendor if they had to whip out a credit card to do so?"
Hey, don't discount it entirely, Bing-O! I believe it's worth a shot.
Let us discuss the arguments then:
No. 1 : "If Facebook is going to start charging me for using its site, i'll just delete my account." (or not bother to log in anymore)
This is obviously a valid concern. How many people would be so disgusted / dejected / disappointed / that they would actually stop using Facebook?
Not everyone, I think.
In fact, I would bet that "heavy" Facebook users (i.e. people who log on everyday, post their pics - even those back in grade school, etc.) would be "sticky", and remain loyal to the site.
Let's do the math. For example, if 75 million users drop out and you collect US$5.00/year from the remaining 125 million or so users, that's easily US$625 million in revenue.
The key here is to make the payments as unobtrusive as possible, and reasonable enough so as not to make a significant dent on the individual user's wallet.
How can it possibly be done?
a) "Micropayments" on selected actions
Off the top of my mind (this is not an exhaustive list) :
Logging in to view friends' pics and profiles - FREE
Updating your status / profile - FREE
Posting comments on friends' pics and "likes"- FREE
Taking quizzes - hmm....okay, FREE
Adding friends - say, FREE for first 300 friends, and you get charged something like 1 US cent for each friend exceeding this number
Uploading pics - can be FREE for first 50 pics, and then a 2-cent charge on each pic thereafter (hey, bandwidth does cost money)
SuperPoke! - definitely 1 cent for each
Playing games - perhaps FREE at first, but if you keep on playing Yoville or Typing Maniac for hours on end, it will cost you.
The total amount you spend each month would then be charged to your credit card bill.
Of course, the general level of activity would likely slow down, as people think twice about taking certain actions, etc. You might even argue it makes it so much less fun!
b) Purchase of stored-value units
Taking off from the prepaid cellphone card industry, one can opt to buy a certain amount of units (say US$10.00) online from Facebook, which would be debited as you play games, give gifts, upload pics, etc.
This would work for users who fear they would be unable to control their "spending" on Facebook actions.
Meanwhile, Facebook management can allay advertisers' concerns, by pointing out that the members who dropped out tend to be those people who likely didn't log in too much; didn't update their profiles; only had a few friends, etc. (in general, those people who never got into the spirit of things, as it were). Hence the remaining membership are the "quality" ones, who are more receptive to ads.
Further, they can continue to beef up content and features, to prevent the drop-out rate from becoming too high. To convince non-users to sign up under the new pay-as-you-go scheme, they can make an online ad campaign that goes something like, "Facebook is where the fun is." or "Facebook: Where all your friends are talking about everything, except you."
No. 2 : "If Facebook is going to start charging me for using its site, i'll just move to other social networking sites."
Again, this is certainly a valid response. But which site(s) offer a viable alternative to Facebook?
Friendster is passe and full of scammers. Multiply and MySpace's features are lacking in comparison.
One might make the following riposte, "Well, i'm sure someone will create a new social networking site, with even better features, and everyone will go there."
True, this is very possible. But would this hypothetical new site's business plan be based on advertising revenues only? How then would it go about making a positive return on investment?
So, dear reader, what do you think? Is the above analysis actually worth contemplating about? Or is it pure hogwash?
Hence, I'm asking you (yes, you) this question: Would you pay to be on Facebook?
Hit the comment button NOW.
COBRATOX cream with snake venom
(Bonus Post, Saigon-Siem Reap-Hanoi-Halong vacation)I guess i had ended my series on Vietnam and Cambodia too soon. Given my love for weird, oddball stuff, i couldn't resist posting about this new discovery below.
While browsing at one of the numerous souvenir shops at the Cu Chi Tunnels, my interest was piqued by this product:
Yes, you had read the box correctly, "Cream with Snake Venom". It is intended to provide relief for arthritis, rheumatism and similar ailments.
While other creams / ointments / liniments such as Bengay (from USA), Salonpas (from Japan), White Flower (from HK), Counterpain (from Thailand), Omega (from Phils.) and Tiger Balm (from Singapore) are basically combinations of Menthol / Methyl Salicylate (Oil of Wintergreen) / Camphor with other essential oils, Cobratox does them all one better with its unique ingredient. It says right there on the side of the box, "Dried venom of cobra 0.0005 g".
Cobratox is produced by the formal-sounding Center for Rearing, Planting, Researching & Manufacturing Pharmaceutical Products of Military Zone IX.
I don't know about you, but what comes to my mind is a bunch of grim-faced men wearing combat fatigues slitting open the throats of writhing cobras and extracting their venom before stitching their insides back again before putting them on these big glass jars filled with water, which men are supposed to buy to increase their stamina in making . . . ahh, "Boom Boom". [A Vietnamese euphemism for . . . but let's not go there, shall we? ;D]
It was kinda cheap at 20,000 VND (around US$1.15) for a 20 gram tube, so i figured there was nothing much to lose if it didn't prove effective in relieving the pain from my tennis elbow.
The accompanying piece of paper inside the box wasn't of much help (see above pic), being in Vietnamese, but there are simple instructions to "apply to painful area with massage 2 times daily" on the box.
I am not so sure about the science behind using dried cobra venom as a painkiller ingredient; i have this vague notion that cobra venom kills you by paralyzing you, so i guess tiny quantities will just deaden your nerves a bit (thereby providing pain relief), no? :D
So, the 500,000 VND question is, is Cobratox more effective than Bengay, Tiger Balm and the like?I've used it for a week so far, and here is how Cobratox performs based on the ff. criteria:
Heat - packs a bit of a wallop in giving that warm, burning feeling to temporarily relieve joint pain
Odor - neutral, meaning no discernable "snaky" smell, haha :D Would be nice if it had some sort of scent.
Feel - non-greasy, easy to rub into the skin. Not slimy, thank God!
Bottomline, it performs about the same as other pain relief ointments, so perhaps the REAL reason to use Cobratox is to be able to stretch the truth a bit and brag to your gymmates / sports teammates / etc. as such:
"My doctor has prescribed alternative therapy for my tennis elbow. We are applying dried cobra venom on it, which will eliminate the pain, AND as a side effect, increase my agility and quickness on the courts, AND increase my stamina to make Boom Boom. Unfortunately, the ointment is highly toxic and highly limited, so it is not available to the public."
